"Unexpected Complications" (Nature)
“Lay her face down on the counter!” Ethan had taken the group into the town pharmacy. It wasn’t much, but it was the best they could do. “What do we do now?” Gwen panicked. “Can you see a second wound?” Perpendicular to the first gunshot wound, there was indeed another one, “Yes! There is!” Gwen reported. “Good. That means the bullet exited the body. That’s one less problem to worry about. Alright, I need you to get the following…” Elsewhere, Elliot was still running through the fields angrily to find Vincent. “I know you can hear me Vincent!” His voice bellowed and echoed back to him. “Show yourself! Face me like a man!” He hacked into several trees irately with the axe. “What? You’re telling me you can shoot my girlfriend but you can’t face the consequences?” He continued to hack into the trees. “I am going to find you. Trust me on that!” He continued stampeding around. In the pharmacy, Ethan’s advice and Gwen’s handiness had treated Olivia quickly – though whether they had succeeded remained to be seen. “Do you think she’ll be ok?” Annabelle was concerned, “I hope so,” As was everyone else. “I’m more worried about Vincent,” Andy reminded them, “We don’t know what Elliot’s capable of. But judging by his reaction, I don’t think Vincent will make it out of this day alive.” Everyone looked at each other worryingly. “Do we really care though?” Upon saying this, Annabelle received a look of repulsion from her mother, but this quickly turned to one of agreement. “What? Are you two serious? I know he was out of line in what he said and did, but he did make one good point. Without his truck, we wouldn’t have made it here,” Andy defended his friend. “What he did was ‘out of line’? Andy he may’ve just killed someone. If Elliot slaughters him, it’s his own fault,” Gwen refuted, “We wait here until Elliot comes back, with or without Vincent. If he brings him back alive and Olivia isn’t, then he’ll probably kill him. I’m sorry Andy, we can’t help him now.” He looked slightly saddened, but also accepting of the fact that it was Vincent’s own fault. The open fields had developed into woods. Although it provided more cover for Vincent, Elliot could tell that he was still around. “Just show yourself mate, please. I know that you hate me. It’s just the two of us here now. No one else ever has to know what happened here. If you kill me, the group will never know. All you have to do is show yourself.” His voice was less angry now, and more of a lower spiteful tone. He heard a twig snap behind him, and turning around, he noticed Vincent revealing himself. The two men stared each other down. Outside the pharmacy, Gwen watched the sunset across the sea - a beautiful contrast to the first sight she and Elliot shared a heart-to-heart over. Ethan approached her with a cup of tea, “Drink,” she looked down at the cup, surprised by it, “Tea?” He nodded blithely, “You would be surprised how much of the stuff we have here. It’s just me and my son who live here, we don’t get many visitors. The last group of visitors we got… oh, they were nasty. Very nasty. I hope you can understand the need for my shotgun earlier.” Gwen nodded, but then picked up on the ‘previous visitors’, “The bad people. Did they happen to travel by a bus?” Ethan looked at her, astounded, “How could you possibly of known that?” Gwen leant her head back, “They were called the Bandits. We encountered them as well. They killed my husband and the brother of the woman that got shot.” Ethan looked disheartened, “Oh, I see. Where are they now?” This caused Gwen to smile sadistically, “Most of them are in hell. They invaded our camp. Some of them got away with most of our resources and their bus – it’s why we had to leave. But the main one, I dealt with him myself. I avenged my husband.” Ethan looked slightly afraid of Gwen for that. “What does that make me though? If you kill someone evil, does that make you a better person? Or just as evil as they are?” He shrugged, “Who knows. The way I see it, Gwen, there’s no such thing as Good and Evil in this world. Everything is just something you had to do in order to survive.” She accepted the cup of tea upon this statement, “Like a drinking a cup of tea?” They both laughed merrily. Elliot and Vincent continued to stare at each other. “I’m sorry for shooting Olivia,” he taunted Elliot, “I was aiming for both of you. The perfect lover’s death.” Elliot clenched his axe more tightly. “I hope you understand; this still doesn’t make me a villain. Fuel is a precious resource, and we wasted an entire gauge to find someone who didn’t want to be found. I can’t let you squander what little my group has. We were just fine before you came along. So for that Elliot, I am sorry it came down to this.” Gripping the axe even more tightly, he accepted what had to be done, “Likewise.” Inside the pharmacy, Reed, Andy and Annabelle waited for Olivia to come back around. “She seems to breathing fine,” Andy remarked, “Her pulse is pretty fast. I think she’s going to be alrigh –” Annabelle interrupted him, “Don’t say it. Don’t jinx her.” He made the mouth-zipping gesture. “So tell us about yourself Reed,” she turned to him, “Like, how long have you and your dad been living in this town?” He shrugged in thought, “Well, for as long as I can remember really. I was raised here as a kid, I moved away for a bit, but I came back. I had to… What about you? You’re Welsh for starters, what brought you this far into England?” She nodded towards Andy, “He did. Right at the start of all this, he saved my family. The four of us came over to England, we thought it would be better here. But obviously it was just as bad. Everyone was still dying… In fact, have you ever really thought about that? What caused all this in the first place?” He shook his head, “I haven’t. Not really. I’ve just accepted it. My father believes it was something in the air though. Possibly an airborne pandemic made by the government. Or aliens even.” She snorted in laughter, “Aliens? Really?” But Reed slightly believed his father, “You really think it’s outside the realm of possibilities? If you went back in time and said to someone the world was going to end in 2026, you’d be marked down as crazy – but you’d also be right. It’s the same with aliens, you might think my dad and I are crazy – but they do exist, regardless the state of our own world. Elliot threw the axe behind him. “Out of respect, hands only.” Vincent agreed to his terms, “May the best man win.” Elliot nodded and repeated those words, “May the best man win…” And with that, they charged at each other. Elliot dropped to the ground when they got close, and stuck his leg out to trip Vincent up. Grabbing him by back of his jacket, Elliot launched him into the nearest tree, causing Vincent to shield his head. Vincent kicked at Elliot’s kneecap, knocking him to the ground. He dashed towards the axe. Picking it up, he spun around; but Elliot had disappeared. “And you told me to come out and fight like a man.” He stood still, listening to all the movement around him. Elliot was behind the tree, and threw a stick at him. Turning to tree, Vincent smiled evilly and headed towards to it. As he raised the axe, Elliot jumped out from behind it and tackled Vincent to the ground. “Hands only I said!” He punched his head into the ground several times. “Why did you make it come to this!” He continued to punch his face. Scrambling his hand around, Vincent gripped the axe, and swung it into Elliot’s shoulder, he winced out in pain and rolled back. Getting on his feet, Vincent wiped his mouth and stood over Elliot. Olivia made several grunting noises, as Annabelle jumped up to help her. “Olivia? Can you hear me? Hello?” She brushed Olivia’s hair out of her face as she began to open her eyes. “She’s alive!” Annabelle announced, relieving Andy and Reed. “Get my mum!” Annabelle ordered Reed before turning back to Olivia. “Welcome back sleepy head.” When her eyes were fully open, she surveyed the room, “Elliot… Where…” She whispered. Andy and Annabelle looked at each other, “He’ll be back soon. Remember, he promised you he would come back. Remember that?” She tried to keep her awake, but it wasn’t working, as Olivia closed her eyes again and stopped grunting. “Olivia no! Wake up! Stay with us!” She checked her pulse, and fortunately it was still going, and she was still breathing. “I’ll look after them. I’ll even look after Olivia as your consolation prize.” Vincent looked down at Elliot, who had seemingly given up. He raised the axe, preparing to bring it down on Elliot… but he was counting on this, Elliot pulled himself up with a grip on his knife and inserted it into Vincent’s leg. Dropping the axe, he clenched his leg and fell back against the tree. Picking the axe up, Elliot stared at Vincent who tried to get back up. Elliot swung the axe at his other leg, causing him to drop back to the ground in agony. “Why don’t you just finish me already,” Vincent caught his breath. “We’ll see…” Elliot kicked his head back against the tree, rendering him unconscious. Around an hour had passed, but Olivia had not woken up again. “What do we do Andy?” Annabelle confided in him, but he didn’t know. From outside, they heard Gwen call out “Elliot!” They looked at each other, then rushed outside quickly. It was obvious that Elliot had learnt a lesson from Gwen, he came down the road pushing Vincent along in a wheelbarrow. When Elliot finally got to them, they had taken him into the pharmacy to see Olivia. “Please wake up for me…” He held her hand, “We’ve got the whole world to explore still.” Although she was still breathing, she was motionless beyond that. “That’s it,” picking up the axe again, he headed over to the wheelbarrow Vincent was in. “Whoa, Elliot. Stop!” Andy stood between them. “Listen to me, you don’t want to do this.” He tilted his head slightly, “Um… I think I do. Get out of the way.” But Andy didn’t move. “Look he did wrong, ok? He messed up, well, more than messed up. I get it. But you’re no better yourself! Remember how you stabbed Steven?” He raised the axe, “Firstly, that was out of self-defence. And secondly, he was the one trying to kill me. Olivia on the other hand is just an innocent woman he wanted to kill. I don’t care that he wanted to kill both of us, he wanted to kill her. That’s why I have to do this. He’s not safe to be around anymore.” Andy gave him a proposition, “Then send him away instead! How about that? Don’t kill him, just leave him behind. I think that’s fair, right?” Elliot disagreed, “He’ll just come after us again. No.” He physically pushed Andy aside now, but he just stepped right back in between the two men. “Do you want to die as well or something?” Elliot lowered the axe again. “If you kill Vincent, you’ll have to kill me too. Good luck getting along with Gwen after that. She’ll kick you right out of this group. Trust me.” Elliot breathed in, and debated his choices in his mind. “If she dies, he dies. If she lives, he lives – but he is sent away from the rest of us. Deal?” Andy nodded straight away, “Ok, yes. Fine.” Yet another hour passed, and still Olivia remained out. It was night time now. Elliot was growing impatient, whilst everyone else had gone to rest elsewhere. Atop the hill, Elliot heard a car pulling up. Taking the revolver from Olivia’s belt, he looked at her momentarily, then ventured outside. It was too dark to make out what kind of car it was; however, he could make out two silhouettes amongst the darkness. The two shadows slid down the hill onto the beach, as Elliot ducked behind an advertisement stand for cover. They were heading towards the town for sure, which slightly concerned Elliot, as he believed he could see rifles on both of them. Once they had passed the pharmacy, Elliot jumped out pointing the revolver at them. “Alright hands up, and drop the weapons. I don’t have time to be messing with anyone right now.” The two figures seemed to face each other, before turning fully around – they did not drop their weapons however. “I said drop them!” He aimed his revolver at the one slightly closer to him. “Elliot?” He was shocked to hear one of them call his name. “Yes… Who- Who is that?” She stepped towards the pharmacy, once she was close enough, Elliot worked out who it was, “Erica? What are you doing here?” She looked back at her friend, nodding for her to come over as well. “You remember the nurse right? Tina?” Elliot greeted her with a smile and nodded, “Of course.” Erica got back to answering his question, “Most people fled London. I heard that you guys took off in a hurry, and we decided to come after you. Guess we’re lucky we went the right way. Although we had a feeling you went this way because Steven’s little boat had disappeared. You went after Olivia, I gather.” Elliot nodded, but his face told a different story, “What’s happened? Is she alright?” He went back inside the pharmacy, Erica and Tina following him in. Erica was impressed with how well she had been treated, “Whoever it was, they must have experience in medicine. Possibly a doctor or a nurse like Tina here maybe.” Elliot breathed a sigh of relief, “So she’s going to make it?” Erica happily nodded, “Putting unexpected complications aside, yes.” But then he breathed in concerned again, “Unexpected complications?” She looked deeply at him, “Although there is an exit wound, the bullet still could’ve ruptured something inside. She might have internal bleeding. But that’s a huge might, if this were the case, she would likely have reacted massively. It’s normal to be unconscious for this long. For some shooting victims they can be out for days. Don’t worry, Elliot. Tina and I are here now, as well as that other medically-experienced person. She’ll be fine!” As Erica comforted him, again he breathed a sigh of relief.